A Madras evening - LMS

Incredibly beautiful blue sky day... Parrots gliding over the roof... Spring flowers of mango and konrai in bloom... promising a glorious summer...

Streaking through buildings and cellphone towers, the evening sun showcases the thousand shades of green on the leaves of the trees it highlights

Quietly, a million cups of tea and coffee are brewed and sipped, in appreciative meditation, for now ignoring the cacophony of calumny and acrimony that will soon rise in a thousand TV channels

A distant two wheeler engine roars gently through the mostly silent streets, punctuated by the cawing of crows, chirping of other birds, and the chatter of untiring boys playing street cricket

Other LMS

Nagasvaram

In a Library
Kerala
Traffic
Kumbakonam


Essays as a Connoisseur of the Commonplace 

Nagasvaram tavil - LMS

Typhoon in a tube, thunder in a drum. The Nagaswaram and Tavil cannot be confined to walls of a sabha. They yearn to roar at the clouds and soar to the sky. An amplifier is a decorative afterthought. Why confine ourselves to a chamber, they query, when we can share our exuberance with every living thing; to wash over the sands and streets with our melody, to ripple across rivers and ponds, to make leaves quiver with our nuance and mountains tremble with our majesty. As the tavilar's fingers scribble rhythmetic, the nayinaar's shoulders swing his trumpet, tracing a dance of pure delight.


This LMS was written a few years back during a concert by Vyasarpadi Kothandaraman and Palanivel at Sivagami pethachi auditorium in Alwarpet. But it applies to any nagasvaram tavil concert in a sabha.

Other LMS
1. Kerala
2. Kumbakonam
3. Traffic
4. In a library
5. Greenery of Chola country

My essays on music
Contents Page for this blog

In a Library - LMS

Watching slow sparse traffic. The sea in the distance, the Adyar winding slowly towards it. A train snaking into a station. Blue sky. Concrete jungle interspersed with patches of Guindy forest. A vast cloud throws the whole landscape into shadow, like a celestial photoshop took. Books in an ac room. A studied studious silence of. . . . studying. And some reading too. A streaking pigeon, a chirping thrush. Where thoughts may gently wander, a battered soul may heal, breathing slow to whispered rhythm, ideas may spring, an aesthete may admire, and a thumb may compose an essay....

Note

An LMS is a long SMS. I used to send these to select friends on my Nokia cellphone, before smart phones became common and you could do this on Facebook. Capturing an experience, with some literary flavour. I dont think SMS has to be just cryptic TLAs and emoticons.

The above LMS was composed a couple of years back.

Other LMS
1. Kerala
2. Kumbakonam
3. Traffic

Kerala - LMS

Green is the color of everything

Kerala 
where green is not the color of envy, because it is the color of everything.
where palmyra rhymes with coconut and raindrops serve for rhythm.
where water wages love and war, enriches land and redraws maps,
where roofs slope steeper than hills.

Where field is garden, garden is grove, groves are woods;
  and wood is material form function and philosophy, 
    and wood shapes thought as much as Man shapes wood.

Where custom is as rigid as attitudes are mellow; 
where tradition is pride and pride is tradition; 
and spices serve to supplement, not sublimate. 

Where oil lamps flicker in subdued splendor 
alongside the fluorescent grandeur of unabashed modernity.

Water, palmyra, coconut

Wood shapes thought
and Thought shapes wood

Similar sketches 

Chola greenery - LMS
Kumbakonam - LMS

Traffic - LMS
Landscape of Polur (Tamil)

Greenery of the Chola country

Koneri raja puram

Tukkaachi

Chola country : An anthology of green, punctuated by concrete, where streams and canals form watery rhymes. Little boys frolic, splashing in the waters, in bowery nooks that filter sunlight; where Nintendo and Playstation are too pricey to surpass the free delights of earth and water. Leaf, tile and cement ceil houses, pumpkins and dish antennas compete as decor, tractors have garages, cranes fish and farmers crane their backs in rice fields. 






Cows amble, hens scramble, bulls strut, insects flit, bees bumble, dores dumble, drunks stumble and butterflies flutter by. Shops vend tea, snacks, fruits, betel, plastic goods, jewellery, european and persian fabrics, motorbikes, xerox, cell phone, urea, cement, seeds... It's also astounding how many schools with large buildings there are in small towns. Waves of modernity wash the shores of the medieval and ancient.

Feasting on the greenery is an excellent vacation for the eyes, especially if accustomed to LCD screens, on palm desk and wall.

Canal outside Tukkaachi

Similar Sketches

Kumbakonam - LMS

Traffic - LMS

Landscape of Polur (Tamil)

Traffic - LMS

Traffic is so beautiful here. Muted horns and muffled engines, a whispering breeze, a frothing sea. A city on the move, a procession of mechanical power and human ingenuity, a river of rolling lights, of logistics and luxury, toil and livelihoods, trade and liveliness, of the unsung, by the unheard, for the unknown, so  common place, its magnificence undreamt of by poets and philosophers, nay, even scientists and engineers of yore; the tumult and tides of life, the bells and whistles and joys and sorrows of daily existence. With similes yet to coin, metaphors yet to sculpt.

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I notice several people complain about traffic, for example, without realizing how amazing it is that there is so much traffic at all. Last year, when someone complained about being stuck in traffic, I happened to be on Marina beach, in Madras and I composed this.

Connoisseur of the commonplace சாதா விந்தைகளின் ஆரா ரசிகன்

Kumbakonam - LMS

February 27, 2012.

Kumbakonam early morning. Most of the town is asleep, few shops open. A riot of colors and a ravish of fragrances - flowers for worship, on periya kadai theru : malli roja kanakambaram alli saamandhi and thulasi. Still waters in temple tanks. Ilayaraja on a tea shop radio - melodious, not blaring. The sleepy streets still wear shadows as bedsheets, which the Sun, like a gentle mother waking her kids, peels away slowly. A horny bus roars through like an indecent mosquito, but others hum softly - like kind, thoughtful uncles. Nagareshu Kudanthai.

Note: I occasionally write a long SMS (which I call LMS), when I am seized by a mood, feeling, emotion, idea, concept, etc. Since some people have enjoyed them (a few have not, emphatically), I thought I might share some of them on my blog. Consider them thumb nail sketches with words - literally, as I thumb them on my cell phone.